Springtime for Hitler Apologists

What starts as farce winds up as reality

In their quest to rip off investors with a guaranteed flop, The Producers Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) purchase the play “Springtime for Hitler.” Author Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars) tells the producers they were “taken in by the Allied propaganda,” which was of course “all lies.”

“Let me tell you this!” Franz explains, “and you’re getting it straight from the horse. Hitler was better looking than Churchill, he was a better dresser than Churchill, he had more hair and he told funnier jokes and he could dance the pants off of Churchill!” On the other hand, “Nobody ever said a bad word about Winston Churchill, did they? No! “Win with Winnie! Churchill! With his cigars. With his brandy. And his rotten painting, rotten! Hitler, there was a painter. He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!” And so on.

Herr Liebkind’s rant works well because, as writer-director Mel Brooks knew, in 1967 no serious person would have praised Hitler and mocked Churchill. Jump ahead to 2024 and Churchill becomes “the chief villain of World War II,” according to Darryl Cooper, praised by Tucker Carlson as “the most important popular historian working in the United States today.” Cooper is part of a surging Hitlerjugend that sees merit in the genocidal National Socialist. Like director Roger Debris (Christopher Hewitt), they seem unaware that National Socialist means Nazi.

In “Springtime for Hitler,” the dancers form a swastika, now repeated in real time by students at Branham High School in San Jose, accompanied by a quote from Hitler on the “Jewish Question.” So to reverse Marx, what starts as farce repeats as reality, with tragedy sure to follow. Meanwhile, as Steve says, a couple chasers here.

In the 1985 Fletch, Kenneth Mars plays Stanton Boyd who asks Fletch (Chevy Chase), “what kind of a name is Poon?” To which Fletch replies, “Commanche Indian.”

Dick Shawn, who played “that’s our Hitler” Lorenzo St. DuBois (LSD) in The Producers, died on stage at UC San Diego on April 17, 1987. The previous day, this writer heard William F. Buckley Jr. speak at the same venue.

Zero Mostel died in 1977, Kenneth Mars in 2011, and Gene Wilder in 2016. At this writing, writing, 51 years after Blazing Saddles and 58 years after The Producers, WWII veteran Mel Brooks carries on at 99. Thanks for the memories and make it a full 100 in 2026.

Steve adds—Check out this short squib from the late Gene Wilder about how the film’s title was changed, and wonder how it might go down now: